Cheh's life

I finished reading Chang Cheh's memoir last night. I bought the book ages ago, but finally got around to reading it because our pal Dan is in a new version of one of Chang's classic flicks, The Blood Brothers. The director is also responsible for well-known movies like The Golden Swallow, The Heroic Ones, The Assassin, Crippled Avengers, and The Five Venoms. Late in his career, he filmed Just Heroes, which was produced by directors that he had given a boost to, such as Wu Ma and John Woo.


The Five Venoms (1978)

Cheh's book isn't loaded with gossip or theory. It's more like a resume written in first person. He's very humble, and you get the feeling that his days behind the camera were a lot of more exciting than he makes them seen.

The director is pretty frank about movies he made by the numbers but addresses topics like violence (against it), homosexuality (his male characters were just bonding), and politics between Shaw and Golden Harvest as well as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China (he's apolitical in either case) with perhaps a little too much diplomacy. I guess that's what happens when a book is written by a guy in his waning years through interviews, notes, and whatnot.

Not that there aren't some revelations. Cheh takes credit for helping to turn the tide of cinema by bringing the spotlight back on guys (the screen had been ruled by woman martial artists) and bringing a new, hand-held style of cinema (in parts of One-Armed Swordsman). But he takes pains to clarify that he wasn't aiming to shake up the industry; he was just doing his thing.


One-Armed Swordsman (1967)

In the end, this 2003 book published by Hong Kong's Film Archive and Leisure and Cultural Services Department isn't a real page turner. But it's got a classy, understated look that matches the director's demeanor, and if you are a scholar as well as a fan of martial-arts films from the '60s and '70s you'll dig the interesting tidbits about guys like Jimmy Wang Yu, Ti Lung, and Danny Lee (more like asides than anecdotes) as well as the thick-ass filmography.